Back on Track?
EDITORIAL Back on Track? Why were we worried about Secretary of State Colin Powell's trip to the Middle East? After all, for one crucial week, Powell ended up providing diplomatic cover for an...
...This past week, President Bush returned to his Axis of Evil rhetoric, and we were glad to hear it...
...While praising Sharon, the president returned to his condemnation of Palestinian terrorism, blaming the Arab states and Yasser Arafat for doing too little—actually, nothing—to stop it...
...What have the president and his team been doing about this grave threat in the three months that have passed since Bush gave his historic "Axis of Evil" speech...
...It's surely time to order the Pentagon to prepare a battle plan that can be executed before the end of this year...
...The administration shouldn't allow itself to get sidetracked again...
...He has rediscovered the Bush doctrine...
...Nor, unfortunately, was this President Bush's intention when he ordered Israel to stop and withdraw two weeks ago, saying "enough is enough...
...The Arab world, many Europeans, and some Americans hoped that the Middle East peace process would absorb the Bush administration's energy, and delay or thwart any move against Iraq...
...But words aren't enough anymore...
...Time to begin the serious arming and training of the Iraqi opposition...
...So far as we can tell, not enough...
...Now it appears the president is following his own instincts again...
...Powell kept the Europeans and Arabs and the American media bedazzled, or at least confused, while Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon carried out difficult operations against Nablus and Jenin and other hotbeds of radical terrorism, arresting hundreds of known terrorists and uncovering mountains of weaponry and suicide-bomb-making paraphernalia...
...Time to instruct the secretary of state that his top priority now is preparing allied support for action against Iraq...
...According to an Iraqi newspaper (meaning there was an official "leak"), Saddam told the bomb-makers to accelerate the pace of their work "with the goal of defending Iraq...
...We need to begin right now taking practical and visible steps toward the removal of Saddam Hussein...
...Yasser Arafat remained under house arrest, with no prospects for release any time soon...
...his way out of the wilderness...
...But Sharon saved the Bush administration from itself by not listening...
...They plant nuclear bombs in our cities...
...After four weeks of moral and strategic confusion that threatened real damage to American interests, the president seems to have found After four weeks of moral and strategic confusion, the president seems to have found his way out of the wilderness...
...Robert Kagan and William Kristol...
...Yes, we understand that helping Israel fight its war was not exactly the point of Secretary Powell's trip...
...There is not much sign of urgency in the planning for an invasion of Iraq, no organized effort to support the Iraqi opposition, no public diplomacy to speak of either at home or abroad, no pressure on our Arab "friends" to make their choice between supporting us and supporting the terrorists...
...And not a moment too soon...
...When Powell left the region last week, Israeli forces remained entrenched in Ramallah and in Bethlehem, with significant forces poised on the outskirts of most other major Palestinian towns and refugee camps...
...Time to rid the Middle East of a vicious predator who is working full time to get a nuclear bomb...
...After all, for one crucial week, Powell ended up providing diplomatic cover for an ongoing Israeli military operation that has made significant strides against the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian territories...
...A little over a week ago Saddam Hussein held a meeting with his top nuclear scientists...
...While the president and his team have been ineffectually playing at peacemaking, Saddam has been moving ahead into a new era, a new age of horrors where terrorists don't commandeer jumbo jets and fly them into our skyscrapers...
...We'd love to know which of the president's top foreign policy advisers assured him that Sharon would obey a command to withdraw, and thereby set up Bush for his weakest moment since September 11...
...Their coordinated effort to drag the administration into peace-processing, and away from war-preparing, worked for much of the past month...
...Once Powell had returned, Bush swung back behind Israel, declaring Sharon a "man of peace," and implicitly endorsed the continued confinement of Arafat and the continued military occupation of Ramallah and other Palestinian areas...
...It's time to act...
...More specifically, he saved the president from his advisers, who over the past month have behaved as amateurs in this moment of high stakes diplomacy...
Vol. 7 • April 2002 • No. 32
